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> You can argue divine right of kings or white supremacy from political necessity.

Those arguments can be incorrect without entailing all arguments from political necessity are false.

I can incorrectly argue a justification of the flat earth theory from physics - but that would discredit my own intellect rather than the subject of physics.

> Some kind of systems to allocate scarce resources is needed. This doesn't have to be property.

I agree not everything has to be property, but some things must. Essentially anything that's both important and "stealable" needs to be protected by property rights of some kind.

Regardless of how your food and water come into your possession (trade, charity, gov allocation), it's necessary that some of it remains in your possession for you to consume.




> Those arguments can be incorrect without entailing all arguments from political necessity are false.

> I can incorrectly argue a justification of the flat earth theory from physics - but that would discredit my own intellect rather than the subject of physics.

Do you mean the right to (certain very specific form of) property is somehow an empirically shown fact like the geometry of the earth?

Am I right in guessing that you have inclination towards praxeology?

> I agree not everything has to be property, but some things must.

Why do some things must? Because it leads to more desirable consequences than other options, or because it is some metaphysical truth you're somehow privy to?

The first kind of argument is fine, the latter is just blunt rhetorics. I don't see why the former should be spoiled with the latter.


> Do you mean the right to (certain very specific form of) property is somehow an empirically shown fact like the geometry of the earth?

> Am I right in guessing that you have inclination towards praxeology?

Yes for both. I’ve not formalised it but I suspect we can a draw a line from philosophy -> game theory -> evolutionary dynamics -> socially stable systems of “rights”


I'm all for socially stable systems of "rights". And deriving theories from assumptions is all good. Where I depart from praxeology is that I think the assumptions must be changed when they lead to empirically invalid conclusions.

Also, I don't believe ownership rights like we have currently lead to stable societies. This is kind of core of Marx's critique of capitalism.


I actually think we do live in very socially stable societies. Not to say it’s always a good thing.

But we do have clear systems of who gets power, through what means, and what they can do with it. The various classes of society have a relatively peaceful system of competing with one another.

I’m writing from a British perspective but it largely applies to most developed countries.


Europe had two world wars in the last century, and there's a major war right now. The (private) economy has collapsed at least twice. The post-war stability was largely due to reigning in private propery rights.

From a Finnish perspective, where ownership rights are somewhat lesser, the British system's trajectory didn't seem particularly stable when I lived there 2019-2020, and looks even less so now.


I think too much stability is self defeating. It creates fragility like a monocultured ecosystem. Self correction mechanisms are important, even if they're painful. Bad governments and bad enterprises need to be wiped out now and again by war and recession, as a last resort when other forms of reform fail.

Britain never seems stable at first glance. Read a newspaper from 5, 50, 150 or 250 years ago and they'll all be lamenting economic uncertainty, geopolitical dilemmas and social injustice. Yet in that time no revolutions have killed more than 1% of the population, long term economic growth has averaged couple percentage points annually and nobody has successfully invaded the Islands.




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